The album documents Pier, bassist Eric Napier and drummer Bradford Lambert doing what the trio does so well — making music which explodes off the grooves. The nine tracks of driving, exact art-punk boast razor-sharp time changes, staccato rhythms, melodic complexity and Pier’s unique brand of philosophical beat/punk protestations.

He knows that its music which can challenge listeners, and that is unlikely to appeal to mainstream radio programmers. And he doesn’t care.

“On the eve of the release of my ninth album, I was playing keyboards with Barney Bentall,” said Pier. “It paid. At times, that is a primary motivation for those who choose to be in the often expensive musical vocation.”

Pier chose his path early on. Music was there from the day one. His dad is a music professor, his mother plays. The house was full of notes.

“It was a fact in our house, growing up, that learning to play the piano and an orchestral instrument was part of your basic education,” he said.

“Wagner operas had these flashy brass parts, as did Mahler and others, so I chose French horn. And I became actively involved in the underground music scene in Edmonton, with the primary ambition of maybe one day opening for NoMeansNo.”

That happened in 1988. His goal met, Pier set out to see what was the next move. He tried being a roadie for Alberta college radio darlings Jr. Gone Wild. He was bad at that.

Ford Pier.Adam PW Smith /
PROVINCE

“So they asked me to play keyboards with them, which I’d never done in a band before, so I did it, learning everything in time for the next record and away we went,” he said.

“We were working on the road around 200 days a year, and it was the same for Roots Round-Up when I moved out to join them in Vancouver.”

Pier has performed guitar, keyboard and other duties in groups and on recordings ranging from D.O.A., Rheostatics, and Neko Case & Her Boyfriends as well as being a continuous member of Veda Hille’s band.

Along with all the sideman sessions, Pier found time to craft his own material, dropping solo gems like Ford Pier-Ic Victory and 12-Step Plan, 11-Step Pier, leading the Vengeance Trio and writing and arranging the string-oriented Strength of Materials.

The motivator behind playing on “something like a 100” albums has never been money. It’s passion. Pier has an incredible drive to make music, and the Vengeance Trio is one of his favourite projects.

“This lineup has been together for about 1o years now,” he said. “Brad and Eric and I have known each other a long time and the question was can we, who know each other in this way for this period, be in a project together operate as a unit with me being the putative dictator?”

A decade on, there seems little question that the answer was yes. Ask anyone who has seen the group live about the performance and the word most commonly heard is “intense.” This band is accurately named. You just have to wonder what the instruments ever did to deserve the vengeance taken out upon them.

Pier is a leaping, thrashing, howling horror puppet of a player. Napier holds down the bottom end with intestine-realigning runs. Lambert can be hurting his kit one moment and barely tingling a symbol in the next. The group is super tight, powerful and puts everything into its delivery.

While Expensive Tissue is new, much of the material on it dates back a long while. Pier admits that the perception that he is quite prolific isn’t matched — in his mind, at least — with his written output. He works slower today than he used to, but there is a bonus.

“I think that now the music I’m making is of much better quality than it was before, although I’ll look back in 20 years and shake my head at that admission,” he said.

“But there is a song on the album that had its first inception in 1993, another from 2004, and so on. They just sound far better played now.”

Expensive Tissue took “too long” to come together, Pier thinks. There were issues around the availability of JC/DC studios (named for the initials of David Carswell and John Collins), money and timing. At times, Pier thought he might be losing the thread.

“There a thing in stats analysis where you can explain the streak, but you can’t predict the streak,” he said.

“So it makes sense to me that this album, corpus wise, would come out after the Strength of Materials album as the two of them are different modes of expression of where it’s at right now. Songs such as Breathe Under Water or Unlike a Whitening Agent were both written some time ago, and I think could have gone on either record which is a surprise because I see them as very different things.”

An outsider hearing the two albums might think one album is sitting and listening music while the other is mosh pit moving music. Even with its lyric delving into aging, death and kind of downer topics, Glum Ocher from Expensive Tissue is ready-made for dancing. Referencing new music, art song, opera and pop, the only one dancing to Strength of Materials might be Pier himself. Watching him conduct the backing string quartet is a performance in itself.

Lately, Pier has gone on stage solo. He said that it was something he didn’t really relish doing for quite some time but then something happened.

“The year before last, I sort of got into playing solo again because it was something I hadn’t done in a long time and really didn’t want to do anymore,” he said.

“Then I did a couple of solo shows in 2016 and it was fun, although I had to go way back in my catalogue for material because I hadn’t written anything that wasn’t for a band in a long time. So last year, I went back and wrote about a dozen tunes for that specific purpose.”

Expect to see Pier performing without the Vengeance Trio or Strength of Materials, even though he admits to being dedicated to both of those projects. And to Veda Hille, who he “could never turn down a call from, ever.” There are probably others, too.

If it’s interesting and fun, Pier will probably play. His insatiable drive to express his creative visions and entertain audiences just won’t quit. That’s great news for all of us.

The Ford Pier Vengeance Trio plays on a bill titled “Four bands with longish names play shortish sets”. Also on the bill are Limbs of the Stars, Michael and the Slumberland Band and Emily Mordecai.

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